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Uber Banned in Germany and France, and Faces Lawsuits in Multiple States (nbcnews.com)
An anonymous reader writes that Uber "has suffered double-losses in Europe, as both France and Germany continue to reject the company's validity in their regions." Meanwhile, a Boston Uber driver filed a federal lawsuit on Thursday accusing Uber of illegally classifying drivers as independent contractors to avoid providing full employee benefits. An Indianapolis driver has filed a similar suit, which also complains that Uber won't let them accept tips, and keeps any tips that customer's pay them through Uber's app. And remember when Uber and Lyft left Austin after losing a local election which would've required all their drivers to be fingerprinted? Now two lawsuits charge the companies were required to give 60 days notice to all their employees, and is demanding back pay and benefits.
But an anonymous reader quotes this column from the Los Angeles Times arguing that a federal judge's ultimate question is just "how sleazy" Uber really is. We're familiar with the Uber that talked about responding to bad publicity by digging up dirt on reporters following the company. Also the Uber that allegedly stalked passengers using its service, following their travel routes for the amusement of its party-goers... What about the Uber that secretly investigated a lawyer representing an adversary in a lawsuit, and then lied about it? That's the Uber that Federal Judge Jed S. Rakoff of New York wants to hear a lot more about. On Thursday he ordered Uber to turn over to the other side a pile of documents related to the investigation.
Slashdot reader chasm22 points out that the high-powered investigator hired by Uber is apparently a retired senior CIA officer -- a former chief strategy officer, chief of cyberthreat analysis and chief of counterintelligence.
But an anonymous reader quotes this column from the Los Angeles Times arguing that a federal judge's ultimate question is just "how sleazy" Uber really is. We're familiar with the Uber that talked about responding to bad publicity by digging up dirt on reporters following the company. Also the Uber that allegedly stalked passengers using its service, following their travel routes for the amusement of its party-goers... What about the Uber that secretly investigated a lawyer representing an adversary in a lawsuit, and then lied about it? That's the Uber that Federal Judge Jed S. Rakoff of New York wants to hear a lot more about. On Thursday he ordered Uber to turn over to the other side a pile of documents related to the investigation.
Slashdot reader chasm22 points out that the high-powered investigator hired by Uber is apparently a retired senior CIA officer -- a former chief strategy officer, chief of cyberthreat analysis and chief of counterintelligence.
The problem with capitalism is that a company can be successful even if it's bad for everyone.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Didn't slashdot used to love uber?
And by bribes, you mean licensing fees and driver qualification tests that Uber cheerfully ignores despite the regulations predating both this Web company and the Internet itself. As a German citizen who cares about rudimentary quality control, good riddance.
The hell with capitalism it only brings greater and greater misery to the people! The hell with the bosses and their governments and their wars! Long live Lenin and Trotsky!
Yes commrade, after Ubergate the mechanisms of the state will melt aways and we will all become Uber comrades. Everyone will be required to drive and to be a passenger.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I'm curious. What thing that the customer owns gives tips?
At the bottom of the
rules about employees / 1099's need to reworked.
The thing is uber clams there works are 1099's but uber sets the prices can kick people off for not taking X # of open calls / etc. Ban's tips.
Others have really pushed the limes of 1099's like fedex, handy, cable co's, and others.
Keep the status quo. It is good. Politicians need the bribe money from the taxi cab owners.
Status quo? You mean like paying for proper insurance(commercial and liability), required first aid training, proper drivers licenses, mandatory vehicle inspections, and background checks. Sounds good to me, you don't have a problem with any of that do you? Because Uber sure does, all the while it tries to say it isn't a taxi company because it dispatches taxi's just like a taxi company does.
Om, nomnomnom...
Not to mention an element of safety for the general public and the people in the industry, as well as equal opportunity for anyone to be a customer; not just the more profitable.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Reading TFA on the indianna contractor who sued the basis of his suit is that
1) Uber requires him to bring and maintain his own tools
2) expects him to work a certain number of contracted hours.
As far as I know that's exactly the dividing line between contractor and employee. According to the IRS If you hire a maid, then it's an employee if the employer supplies the tools and otherwise its could be claimed to be a contractor.
Now the part about Tips is intriguing. I wonder why drivers don't tell their passengers that. Thus I'm skeptical.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Please. Uber is an overhyped taxi service. They have all this PR horseshit that says they are revolutionizing personal transportation with "ride sharing" and a bunch of very stupid people invested waaaayyyyyy too much money in it.
It's gotten to the point where I hear Silicon Valley and IPO in the same sentence, I just ignore it as bullshit. I haven't been wrong yet and I doubt I ever will. There's too much "stupid money" there.
On your own private road, you might have a point. But chances are you'll be a on public road. You need permit, insurance, and to pay any applicable toll and/or tax.
They need the money. This sort of propaganda doesn't pay for itself.
Uber/Airbnb/etc exist because arbitrage around the law allows for lower priced products and increased profits. Never mind that not all laws were created to protect incumbents.
As a side comment: The reflexive anti-government attitudes of many is particularly puzzling in a democracy: you are getting exactly what you voted for; the reason we have such corrupt government is because we keep electing people that explicitly tell us that at the outset! We also elect people that explicitly tell us that they want to break the system and/or do not believe in it. Why are we surprised at the outcomes?
What you are describing is Blablacar, which is very popular in Europe, and is legal. Unlike Über, it is an actual ride-sharing service. If you are a driver, you log in, put details of your journey, and if other people want to go the same way, they can join you and pay a proportion of the petrol money.
Uber is a cab service. So either we cancel all cab services laws, or Uber complies to them. Having two different rules for similar services, just because one happens to be using a smartphone application and is billing from a foreign country is not a valid reason to have two systems.
They might not even last until the election before they run off with all that 'valuation' cash.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
this may be true in the state, but in Germany everybody can be a taxi driver. All you need is 1) a taxi driver license (it is different exams to the normal one) anybody can take the exams, 2) an insurance on the car which makes it a commercial car 3) if you do pay per kilometer a counter which is verified to be working and properly counting kilometer/seconds of wait by a german institution ("geeicht" - calibration) and 4) no prison sentence for certain crime IIRC.
That is it. there is no medaillon no other artificial limitation by existing companies and . In fact one of the driver which I used to take (before he switched of job) was a normal person which had a normal car, and just a official distance table (he had no counter).
Basically Uber does not want to respect those minimal alws NONE of which are to protect local non-existant monopoly, all of which are to protect the consumers. But Uber feel it is "über alles" (pun intended) and now Germany told him "get out". Look possibly your taxi are bad in the state, but in Germany I have only very good one, since everybody can go into the business, those who don't do a good job simply get less and less fares.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
Uber is not banned in France, and it most probably won't be. Uber was fined because of UberPop, a service that connected "drivers" with no training and no business license with customers. UberPop was illegal from the get go, I have no idea what went through the mind of the executives in charge when they launched this service. The regular Uber service (with professionnal drivers) works just fine.
Nobox: Only simple products.
If I want to pay my neighbor a few bucks to drive me to the store, that is my right, and his. I don't see why government has any authority over private agreements like this.
Scale
If you want to sell a few of your extra tomatoes to your neighbor, same thing. If you want to plant 1000 acres of tomatoes, get some friends to bundle up the ones you can't eat, and offer them in the grocery store parking lot, then state and federal regulators are going to get interested.
Uber drivers may be 'independent contractors' and 'just doing favors for a few friends,' but Uber itself, as an aggregator of those transactions, is functionally indistinguishable from a taxi company. It's in society's interest that for-hire ride companies maintain high standards for their drivers and vehicles, otherwise known as taxi regulations. Nobody's going to get to bent out of shape if you give your neighbor a ride to the grocery store. They'll get bent out of shape if you claim you have 50 neighbors in different parts of the city who all need rides, today, to different places.
I think it's rather the reverse. If you're going to classify us as contractors, you need to give us all the benefits that independent business men have. Uber drivers should be able to set their own price, accept tips for their work that don't go to uber, etc.
The only interaction at that point between uber and the driver should be "Uber: we're going to charge you a finders fee of $x per mile for a passenger; Driver: Okay, I'm willing to pay you that".
If the farmers market was dictating at what price the farmer could sell his cabbages... Yes ;)
Yes it's this arbitrage around the law that is exactly the issue. it shows up in other ways. The pure Food and drink act, pharmaceutical quality, and other protections are circumvented when vendors outside the country can mail their products into the country.
Aliexpress and Ebay would lose a lot of sellers if there were a way to enforce the accurate marking of Customs duties on the outside of the millions of e-packet shipments from china direct to consumers.
It's a puzzle whether one should give up enforcing anything, say it's broken by the disruption of the internet, or crack down.
Uber is an interesting case mainly because it is possible to crackdown.
The contrary argument is a more subtle one. Many markets are strangled by regulations. Take in point google's entry into the underworld of payday lending. What' their first move? to push for legislation to regulate payday lending, and to ban payday lending ads on their own site. Megacorps actually love expensive regulations because it creates barriers to market entry that can only be solved by sheer size of operations to ammortize the administration costs. The taxi cab companies thus have an entrenched position created by the regulations they must obey.
Yet taken individually those regs protect consumers. Yet what they protect against may be an edge case. e.g. background checks may not really be effective or necessary for nearly every driver. On the otherhand they probably do weed out a very tiny number of people who shouldn't be entrusted with passenger safety.
Then there's the grey transition zone between carpooling, hitchhiking, and uber. That probably can be figured out with a brightline formula to make this less gray. But until that happens Uber has a wedge and an appeal to personal enterpirse and sticking it to the large entrenched companies, and the city-renenue machines of taxi taxes.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
If you're going to classify us as contractors, you need to give us all the benefits that independent business men have.
What type of contractors get to set the price to the end user?
I just don't get it. What is the fascination with Uber by Slashdot and other tech sites? It's just another form of taxi service, except the drivers are more like independent contractors rather than employees of a company, right? Why this company continues to draw such intense scrutiny from the press is baffling to me. I must be missing something obvious that accounts for the high level tech interest here though I haven't the faintest idea what it could be.
The point at which market forces begin to correct for congestion is well after the point of gridlock. It doesn't cost much for the taxi to sit in traffic, especially if they have a fare. There are relatively hard limits to how much we can afford to incentivize cars being on the road. Medallions have been one solution to this. Since I'm sure you have a good handle on the drawbacks of those, perhaps you can give me your thoughts on an alternative solution.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
I hate to break it to you, but the taxi industry doesn't do any of those things, except for the insurance.
They deserve to die. I am happy to use other ride-share services, and I used some long before there was Uber. But I won't give Uber any of my business.
rules about employees / 1099's need to reworked.
Some policy wonks believe that the solution is to create additional categories of workers. So instead of just "W-2 employee" and "1099 contractor" we would have a third category for people that are not quite independent contractors, but not really employees either. They would then have some of the benefits of employees, but some of the flexibility of contractors. People working for Uber, Lyft, Task Rabbit, Fivver, Mechanical Turk, etc. might fall into this category.
All of them? When I contract, I tell my prospective customers my rate and they can either work with me, offer a different rate, or look for a different contractor. Uber drivers don't have this flexibility.
-Chris
Who sets the price is one of the least important aspects of determining who is a contractor or employee. Contractors rarely get to arbitrarily set their own prices. Sure they can ask whatever they want but once they decide to take a contract they have to agree to the terms and conditions of the person who they are contracted with and that will usually involve the price of the good or service they provide.
Often at places like farmers markets or sporting events the price of the sold good is at least partially set by the venue since they often receive a percentage of profits as part of the lease agreement and they also don't want to have uneven pricing across individual stalls. That doesn't necessarily make the workers at the individual stalls employees of the venue.
In the case of Uber the drivers could say they will not work unless Uber ups their rate or gives them a larger share but once they accept Uber's offer then they are bound by Ubers rules, which includes pricing structure, for as long as they decide to accept ride requests from the app.
The actual rules for determining contractor vs. employee are very gray. There are about a dozen or more conditions that are looked at and almost every job will meet conditions that would define their position as both a contractor and employee. There is no clearly defined line as to how many conditions have to be met to be one or the other which is why the courts get involved.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
Interestingly enough, if you talk to anyone who actually knows what they're talking about a work schedule set by the employer is actually a minuscule bit of the IRS's three tests. Tenured college profs, for example, only actually have a set schedule on when they have to teach classes. Their office hours, when they're doing research, etc. are their own damn business. Even the much abused Associate Prof is an employee, and they don't even have to be in the state except for class time (which is negotiated with the school, not set from on-high) or office hours (which is set by the prof). Just about any high-level employee can similarly re-negotiate his work schedule and get a paid half-day off to help out at his kid's field trip.
It's also incredibly easy to find examples of contractors who have set schedules. You get hired as a contractor to fix an interior door in a building which is locked except during office hours, and the contract specifies you don't get paid unless you're done lickety–split, plus a nice juicy bonus if it's done tomorow, guess what you're doing from 9-5 tomorrow?
At-risk capital is much more important (Uber drivers own their vehicles, so they do have at--risk capital which indicates contractor), as is employer control (and since Uber drivers are damn near paranoid about pissing off the company, and act like Uber controls them, it does indicating employee), as is the nature of the business (if Uber's lawyers are right, and they aren't a transportation company this indicates contractor; if anyone sane is right and they sell cab rides it indicates employee).
Yes, if the Farmer Market also dictates the prices, defines the products to be sold and the Terms of Service.
My experience here as well. If I want drugs and hookers, could always call a Taxi. If I want a ride in a decent clean car, Uber.
I contract. I set my own rates. And I typically vary it based upon each individual contract.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
OK, so tell uber your price and work out a deal. After all, your customer is uber and they hire you to be a driver.
your entire quality of life is based on your job. You're access to housing, health care, education, food. Everything. We've built up a complicated and messy social contract where if you kill yourself for a business they're suppose to take care of you. Uber completely breaks what little truth there was in that. Worse, the drivers after accounting for their low pay and mileage write offs often end up with effectively zero income for tax and welfare purposes. So like Walmart (but more so) the tax payer ends up covering the bill to keep them working. Food stamps (in the more liberal States), free or heavily subsidized health and child care. Uber becomes the biggest welfare recipient in the world. I suspect it's much, much more worse in Europe where the social safety net is much more robust.
Uber is either a race to the bottom, a huge subsidy for the 1% or both. Either way it should be stamped out. There's nothing good here.
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Uber/Airbnb/etc exist because arbitrage around the law allows for lower priced products and increased profits.
Yes. Lots of mostly pointless laws raise everyone's costs. Thanks for noticing.
As a side comment: The reflexive anti-government attitudes of many is particularly puzzling...
Really? The government mistreats people sometimes and makes life worse for people sometimes and it's "puzzling" that this leads to anti-government attitudes?
Public maintenance of roads didn't start out as a justification for government bullying road users. We don't need to agree to be bullied to use our own public roads.
"mostly pointless". OK, so toss the pointless ones. But Uber/AirBnB have consistently tried to avoid enforcement of the ones concerned with safety and push all liability onto other parties.
Public maintenance of roads didn't start out as a justification for government bullying road users. We don't need to agree to be bullied to use our own public roads.
Luckily it is a privilege, revokable upon abuse. If you want to live someplace where drivers aren't required to be licensed or insured, vehicles don't have to meet safety standards, and all problems will be solved with libertarian fairy dust (civil law suits), please tell me about places where this has been tried and how it is working out.
As a German citizen who cares about rudimentary quality control
...this seems redundant ....
I agree totally. I'm pretty sure the only reason there is any question about what Uber is, is because Uber are paying lots of money to try and keep the question open..
Nobody is going to use Uber when the price of the fare is whatever random amount each driver individually thinks he's worth.
Uber sell taxi services - they are a taxi company. Full stop. They find the customer and they set the price. If it was a marketplace then there would be a negotiation involved.
But then you known that.
Funny how AC Uber supporters are always out in force.
As a side comment: The reflexive anti-government attitudes of many is particularly puzzling in a democracy: you are getting exactly what you voted for; the reason we have such corrupt government is because we keep electing people that explicitly tell us that at the outset! We also elect people that explicitly tell us that they want to break the system and/or do not believe in it. Why are we surprised at the outcomes?
Who is "we"? For example, for US President, the last person I voted for who got elected was Bill Clinton in 1992. So tarring me with the bad choices since is just guilt by association. Then there is the odd assertion you make about people who "explicitly tell us that they want to break the system and/or do not believe in it". Nobody like that has been elected to the level of US President in living memory.
Sure, there's some such people in lower offices. But they aren't that numerous or that harmful. I don't see the point of the concern here.
IMHO, it helps to reduce the puzzlement, if you actually observe what goes on rather than project some fantasy.
That's just it though. We don't need to agree to an arbitrary amount of bullying to have some basic safety and responsibility rules. The government has a responsibility to serve us, not the other way around. And "safety" isn't a magic word that justifies mistreating the public or creating corrupt carve-outs for insiders and government cronies to enrich themselves at everyone else's expense.
Under the Constitution, the law making body is Congress, not the Executive. And in this country, most of the immediate decisions are made at State, county and town level. That is mostly the level of politics that has observable effects on your daily life and where exactly such people in "lower offices" exist.
What type of contractors get to set the price to the end user?
Ironically enough, cab drivers can (at least in the AZ). You can flat rate fares to your little heart's content though, generally speaking, customers aren't going to get too interested in paying more than meter rate for a trip because what's the point in that?
Uber has nothing to do with "competition", let alone a "free market". It deals in "unfair competition", in which it maintains a monopoly on apps and servers, appropriates inflated fees for their electronic service, and uses (underpaid pseudo-entrepreneur) part-timers as throw-away employees to actually drive (and drive out ordinary taxi companies and ordinary taxicab drivers).
The only thing Uber did was to find a regulated market, determine it could make money by an end-run around the regulations, and offer unregulated services by offloading most risks to their pseudo-entrepreneur drivers. In addition they use (apparently successfully) of dog-whistle PR techniques to sell their business model.
Oh, and they also have a standing policy to price-gouge the public as soon as there is any situation that leads to higher than normal demand. Free play of demand and supply they call it. Only ... all of it is hidden within their servers.
And they have a policy to threaten price-comparison sites with legal action (their "terms of service" forbid you to publish any price quotations they make you). They're only pro "free-market" if they stand to make money from it. Not if it brings genuine competition.
Why can we not let the marked solve this problem ? Cabs in my country could really benefit from some competition. Today there is poor vetting of the drivers , due to non existent reputation system or independent third party validation. The drivers rape left and right despite government laws and regulation. Many drivers are rude. All this due to non existent reputation system. The cost is really high, due to low productivity since they can sit many hours in waiting for customers (especially at the air ports). Uber would probably solve this by having a more dynamic allocation of drivers. How to order a taxi is old fashioned. No apps , have to call in to a operator. Several times the taxi has not properly registered my request.
The classic cab driver paradigm is dead. We needed cab drivers due to their knowledge of locations. We do not need this any more due to really good GPS.
The only reason it is still in operation is due to anti competitive laws that favour the classic model. Because cab driver organisations is well connected with the government.
If you want special service X, (e.g. counter in the car) why can you not choose the company that gives you that service? Why do you have to force that requirement on everyone else?
I'm likely sleeping till 9:00.
Then driving to the site, depending on distance I'm there between 10:00 and 11:00, and if the problem is like in all such cases, I'm either done around 13:00 or have to order parts for replacement which wont be available before in two days.
What would you do? Obviously you are there from 9:00 till 17:00 and charge the customer for being idle, telling him next day you need spare parts and give him a list, while I have ordered them already.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I'm continually confused why these people work for Uber and then complain about what its like to work for Uber.... So, don't work there? If Uber is misleading people in the terms of the relationship or contract, that is something to sue over. But if Uber clearly lays out the offer for for someone to drive, and they accept, then that's a valid contract. What Uber drivers are struggling with, really, is that the barrier to entry for a new Uber driver is low. Thus Uber has a large supply of potential drivers. Thus Uber doesn't have to be very generous in its terms to the drivers. Low-skill labor gets low reward, this is not new.
Come play Moral Decay!
Uber is a company that matches drivers with riders. The idea that consenting adults can't give each other rides for money without government permission, or one or the other person becoming an "employee", is absolutely ludicrous.
You seem to be being paid hourly. That's actually one of the big things the IRS looks for: hourly pay = increased likelihood of being declared an employee.
You remember that "at-risk amount" I mentioned that is necessary if you're gonna be declared a contractor? At-risk amount is much higher if you get a set amount for the job, with performance bonuses and performance penalties, rather then the ability to pad the bill by taking extra time.
Because if fixing the door takes weeks rather then a day you probably lost money on the job.
And yes, many, many of the "contractors" you know would actually have a fairly strong case to be reclassified as employees, particularly if their contract is "$150 an hour until we fire you," rather then "$5,000 to finish this program." The "$150 an hour until the program is finished" could be an edge case, particularly if they have emails/records indicating the company says they'll get hired on a new project pretty much immediately after their current one is finished.
Yes. And? It's common to negotiate rates in much of the world (I do it all the time in China with Kuaidi, Thailand directly, etc). But it does make it hard for an app vendor (Uber) to claim a value of over $60 billion...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
It is nice to see France and Germany courts standing by their opinions, after EU commission warned them against banning Uber.
It was obvious intimidation tactics by EU commission, and now the EU court of justice will have to settle the thing.
We just can't do anything anymore. Since when can a contract worker dictate that he must be an employee? Since when can a government tell a company it can't do business b/c it will hurt someone else's business? The capitalist system is about to collapse under it's own crony-ism.
Here in Florida we were about to get the first true high-speed rail, until Rick Scott, our King, unilaterally said "nope". And that was the end of that. Now his crony's are starting their own slow-speed rail (and lie calling it high-speed) that only runs from Miami to Fort Lauderdale to Orlando -- no stops in between. And it will cost major $$$$. Who does that serve? Pigs only.
:T:R:A:N:S:
Uber, "Okay okay. We'll make them all employees." ... a few years ... "Sorry, you're fired. We just automated your job."
The world has much bigger problems and the government is croning around with taxi companies.
:T:R:A:N:S:
Public maintenance of roads didn't start out as a justification for government bullying road users.
No, it started as an excuse for the feds to bully the states *cough*drinking age*cough*...
Wha?..
Huh? It costs two (or more) human's their time — the most precious resource we have in life... But you must've meant something else here — just what, I do not know...
Uber. And Lyft. And the like... They solve the problem of personal transportation for hire. They solve it cheaper than the old solution. The solve it better. The only people clinging to the old way are the rent-seeking governments — upset over the loss of revenues they were getting from the sales of medallions, and the poor taxi-drivers suckered into purchasing those.
Medallions are static and dumb — possessing one says: "Some time ago I and my vehicle were inspected by the city and found decent enough for you to hire me." Computers and ubiquitous personal smart phones obsoleted them like automobile obsoleted horse-driven carriages 100 years ago.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I hate to break it to you, but the taxi industry doesn't do any of those things, except for the insurance.
They don't? You should let them know, because they're mandatory requirements in most of north american and europe. I'd also suggest calling your local vehicle inspection office or the head of it, since in most places mandatory vehicle inspections for vehicles used for commercial use is a mandatory requirement to get your insurance and plates renewed.
Om, nomnomnom...
YES! Someone finally got it!
Uber is trying to merge different ways of doing business, cherry-picking what laws and practices they want to follow, call this "the new sharing economy" and are raking in profits. That it is illegal, immoral and bad practice doesn't matter, as long as they are making money.
Of course no one will use Uber if they were adhering to the laws. It is because they are skirting laws that they can dump prices, set the prices themselves, not pay benefits and expect poor unemployed drivers to work for them since they have little other options. And you, the consumer, are helping Uber in this scam, because you do not care how they conduct their business. It is sad that people that would picket a store that have their clothes made by sweatshops in southeast Asia, accept Uber as their great savior on saturday nights when they want to go home after a party. But, hey, you are wasted by then so I don't expect you to make any good decisions. Luckily for Uber, et al.
Classify the drivers as contractors and allow them to set the price (otherwise Uber is a cartel == illegal practice) or hire them and set the price. This is a simple first step to make Uber a fair player in the taxi/ridesharing/whatever-the-buzzword-of-the-day-is industry.
Totally anti-progress, and anti-sharing economy protecting old fashioned business plans and State revenue streams. Take the assholes that did this apart.
They want a "strong" leader like King George back. Koch is available.
It's all about being naive and having no clue how utterly fucked over they will be if they end up with a "strong" leader. Rand and her book about how wonderful it would be to have a Tsarist nobility in the USA (so long as you are a jailbait princess screwing your way to the top that is) helped add to the delusion.
Huh? It costs two (or more) human's their time â" the most precious resource we have in life... But you must've meant something else here â" just what, I do not know...
"Wha?" is a pretty poor rebuttal. I've actually seen this happening, so I don't know what you think is so crazy about the idea. Panama has very lax requirements for a taxi license and no medallion system; Uber is replaced by word of mouth for the most part. Time is not the "most precious resource we have", it costs a couple dollars per hour for the driver. Market efficiency being what it is, prices are driven down near the cost to provide the service. You can't cut down the cost of gas, but driver wages will tend towards a bare subsistence and maintenance towards a minimum of roadworthiness. And again, market forces begin to correct for congestion when [a] the cost of gas exceeds the driver's profit, or [b] it's so bad people stop taking taxis. Neither of these are particularly efficient mechanisms, particularly the latter as many people may not have access to alternative means of transportation.
Go to Panama City some time and take a taxi. They're dirt cheap, at least for locals. You'll be ludicrously overcharged as a tourist, but that's capitalism too, right? Taxis choke the streets during most afternoons, to the point where they won't even pick you up if you want to go across the city. The vehicles are not necessarily rickety rustbuckets, but generally they are far from new, and I don't think half of them have insurance or working air conditioning.
It's easy to rail against taxi monopolies. You've done so repeatedly. I'm sure it's a good argument. I submit Panama City as an object lesson in giving people incentives to have cars in the streets. I see no value in spreading that problem. How do you imagine that Uber or Lyft will provide a disincentive towards gridlock? How does Panama not become the end game for these services?
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Rebuttals are for (understood) arguments. "Wha?" indicates lack of understanding. Sadly, you would not elaborate on what you meant...
It is Capitalism, and it is fine (you do not object to taxes collected based on one's ability to pay — do you?). Uber is also Capitalism — and it does enable the free information flow, that is so important for free market to function.
That's not a problem of taxis — it is a problem of streets being inadequate for the number of people in need of travel. Forcibly reducing the number of taxis will, very simply, leave some people unable to get where they need to get.
Who is this "giver of incentives" in your world model?
But, whoever that is, you acknowledge it yourself: Panama city is already gridlocked — Uber/Lyft did not make it so. Their ride-sharing options may even alleviate the problem, but the point you are raising is off topic.
Thank you. It is also the topic here.
You know, this is funny (in addition to being off-topic)... I'm sure, you'd be arguing the exact opposite point, if the subject was Netflix et. al "gridlocking" the Internet infrastructure. If a network can not keep up with the users' demand, it is the problem of either the network or the people demanding — trying to blame it on those answering the demand is wrong and bogus. And this is equally true for both computer and transportation networks.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Layoffs are a result of the consumer market not buying enough of a product to support the productive labor required. If you find a way to make 100 units of a product with 100 employees, you charge 1 employee's wage per product, plus a profit margin; if you find a new way to make 100 units using 50 employees, you charge 1/2 employee's wage per product, plus profit margin. If people respond by buying twice as much, you keep all your employees; if they buy more, you hire more people; and if they buy less than twice as much, you lay off the difference (if they buy the same amount of the product, you lay off 50 employees).
With contract work like Uber, a reduction in demand for drivers results in less work. The process of staff reduction doesn't occur; you just get less work (you might get no work).
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So you're bidding, and they've got a maximum budget for the bid, and you're over it. Cool. Go pound sand.
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Uber provides more insurance than taxi companies; and they provide proper background checks of as high a quality as the taxi companies.
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(if Uber's lawyers are right, and they aren't a transportation company this indicates contractor; if anyone sane is right and they sell cab rides it indicates employee).
This is actually a tricky business.
What if I have 40,000 licensed, independent cab services all comprised of one sole-proprietorship cab driver in New York City? Nobody knows to call 1-800-one-of-40,000-cab-drivers. I create a sort of portal that not only lists all of them, but will locate one, hail him via a smart phone app, and connect the passenger (buyer) with the cab operator (seller). Am I *also* a cab service, or am I supplying the service of locating a cab service?
That's kind of like Travelocity (compare airline rates) or Hotels.com (compare hotel rates), isn't it?
Now what if I do the same with ride-share drivers who aren't cabs, and provide the value-add service of background checks and insurance? I provide no transportation infrastructure (the drivers own their equipment); am I a transportation service, an information service, or an insurance reseller?
The thing is we've already defined travel agencies who appear to sell air travel and hotels as "Travel Agencies" and specifically not as airlines, even if you're using them to find airlines and they're getting a cut from the airline for the customer referral. We're trying to not do that with Uber and Lyft, even though the so-called employee is being referred to a customer by *both* Uber and Lyft, and using the same equipment for both so-called employers.
So is Expedia.com an airline? Is that sane?
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Really? The government mistreats people sometimes and makes life worse for people sometimes and it's "puzzling" that this leads to anti-government attitudes?
The observations that "Government regulation X is inefficient and incurs costs for no benefit" and "the Government is big and evil and must be torn down! Down with big Government!" are not identical. Government is both beneficial and imperfect.
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Risk transfer is called "insurance".
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Yes but the Constitution is dumb. It's broken in many areas and, from a technical perspective, needs improvement; from a less-technical perspective, what Americans want and expect is a *dictator*. They elect a President so *he* can make laws and carry out actions, and criticize him for the acts of Congress. They demand the powerful executive *make* Congress do what he said they'd do. They want one man to fix it all.
When we threw out the Monarchy, we threw out accountability for the people making the rules, and continued to behave as if the guy who isn't allowed to do anything is still the Monarchy.
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Well, guess what? I don't vote for crazy or corrupt people at those levels either.
It would be trickier if Uber actually gave people a choice between Uber drivers, which is what Expedia, Travelocity, and travel agents do. They give you a range of options, and you choose the option. As is you click the button, and you don't get a list of drivers. Their algorithm finds a driver, and then the driver gets to figure out whether he wants to be put in touch with you.
It would also be trickier if they had other lines of business. But as is, 100% of their revenue comes from people requesting cab service, and all those people get the driver they got assigned. I sincerely doubt any Judge will look at that and see anything but a ride company trying to dodge it's legal obligations.
There are relatively hard limits to how much we can afford to incentivize cars being on the road.
Yes, cars. Not just taxis - so the price that is to be increased is that of car operation , not taxi operation. Why? Because taxis might even reduce some of the costs of congestion.
1. They don't need to park near the place where the traveller stays for 4 hours - they could park at a cheaper place, or pick up another passenger in that time without parking at all.
2. A high number of easily available taxis could smoothen the transition between 100% personal transport to some public transport on long haul travel. In sparsely populated civilizations, 100% public transport may never happen.
So medallion system is an extremely bad solution to the problems of too many vehicles on the road.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
They do need those in Germany, however. I hate to break it to you, but other countries have figured out how to have a functioning taxi service, and while Uber might be a massive step forward where you live, in other places it is a dangerous step backwards.
Being inconvenient to your argument is certainly good grounds for declaring something to be off-topic. I apologize for not adapting my argument to a meaner intellect. I see as well as ignoring the question I asked you have ascribed to me an additional set of arguments — I appreciate your efforts and I will try to uphold these arguments to your standard.
I understand now that unrestricted taxi ownership does not produce gridlock, and that any real-world examples to the contrary are liberal lies, or the product of liberal policies. I understand that transportation is not fungible and taxis are the only proper means of transportation in capitalist society, so therefore they cause no problems. The Invisible Hand protects us and would never allow private interests to consume the entirety of a public resource. At the moment I have no idea in what sense computer networks could represent a valid analogy to transportation networks, but I think you mean that it will spur Uber to either build more roads or start killing people. Oh. More people, then.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Yes, cars. Not just taxis - so the price that is to be increased is that of car operation
Interesting idea. Most cities with severe traffic problems solve them by declaring that, absent emergencies, you're not allowed to drive on certain days. I'm sure your idea would be a welcome source of income if it is feasible.
Your first point addresses parking, not congestion. Your second point refers to sparsely populated areas, which do not typically have congestion issues, absent slow motorhomes or large animals in the road. I'm not entirely sure I'm following what you're suggesting with regards to "smooth[ing] the transition", but alleviating some of the issues associated with congestion is clearly not preferable to preventing congestion.
From my standpoint, it seems impossible to accurately price the space available on city streets, therefore market-based systems will perform poorly. I'd like to be wrong about that. Panama City would probably also appreciate a solution; I believe they have chosen to build light rail instead of implementing a medallion system.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Interesting idea. Most cities with severe traffic problems solve them by declaring that, absent emergencies, you're not allowed to drive on certain days. I'm sure your idea would be a welcome source of income if it is feasible.
You are right, and I don't like this "solution". A city can tide over emergencies using such methods, but making this the default "solution" for traffic problems almost amounts to the city breaking its promise to the citizens when they bought / registered the car.
If a city sees this as its future - it should start increasing the number of allowed taxis, not decreasing. Of course that only works along with adding tonnes of public transport, at least along the main arteries. At the same time, the cost of registering a new car in the city should increase - because the earlier tax (one time, or recurring as the city chooses) clearly wasn't enough. But this will be too little, too late in many cases.
Your first point addresses parking, not congestion. Your second point refers to sparsely populated areas, which do not typically have congestion issues
They are related. If people live at a density of 2-5 per square kilometre, in a large city, it can still choke the central business district of the city and the main arterial roads twice a day 2 hours each. In these circumstances, public transport costing less than trillions of dollars cannot be convenient because to match the convenience of personal cars the public transport needs to stop every 250 metres - which makes it extremely slow.
In such cities, to fix parking + congestion problems in central business district, and congestion problems in arterial roads; it is important that people switch to public transport. They cannot until they can very easily get taxi to the boarding point of public transport from their origin, and also to their final destination once they are done with the public transport ride. This is the transition I was talking about - completely personal car transport to a hybrid of taxi + public mass transit + taxi.
From my standpoint, it seems impossible to accurately price the space available on city streets, therefore market-based systems will perform poorly. I'd like to be wrong about that. Panama City would probably also appreciate a solution; I believe they have chosen to build light rail instead of implementing a medallion system.
Yes, many a times cities realize the price of the space retrospectively. Decades after allowing a car, they realize it costs much more to manage than the tax the city charged for it. This is understandable. But a medallion system along with limited permission to drive one's own car is a prison sentence for the citizens. I'd say good for Panama city - but as we know city planning is a tough nut to crack.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.